The Hourglass Mirage
by Voldy's pink teddy
Summary: A silver thread of thought fell into Ginny Weasley’s palm. She was the only one alive who knew Tom Riddle’s memories well enough to summon them in Portkey form. Voldemort didn’t count…not being truly alive, he could not be killed; neither could a
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Anything in this story that is recognizable as part of the original Harry Potter series belongs to J. K. Rowling, Warner Brothers, Scholastic, and any other distributors that I may not be aware of, not to me.  
  
Summary: A silver thread of thought fell into Ginny Weasley's palm. She was the only one alive who knew Tom Riddle's memories well enough to summon them in Portkey form. Voldemort didn't count...not being truly alive, he could not be killed, and neither could a memory.  
  
My thanks to Betsy, my magnanimous beta-reader, without whom I would have never called anyone an extreme Machiavellian sadist and whose anal- retentive analysis made this a better story.  
  
Added note of explanation to Sacred Magyck and any one else who noticed what he noticed: Please see authors note at end of chapter for explanation of Hogwarts, a History detail.  
  
**The Hourglass Mirage  
  
** Chapter One: Resolution  
  
She was walking in the moonlight-dripped darkness next to the shadowy curtain of the Forbidden Forest, feeling very Slytherin in the frosty night. She had blackmailed her brother with a piece of information that was infinitely more embarrassing to him than it would have been to any normal person, because he was Ron and apt to go as red as the envelope of a howler at the slightest inclination. Sometimes she didn't think there was much difference between a stereotypical Slytherin and Gryffindor action besides perhaps intent, the thoughts that lay beneath the words and actions. She knew that all too well, as she would in fact have been in Azkaban right now or at least expelled for the attempted murder of several of her classmates if this were not so (she was not all that sure at what age one could become legally eligible for entrance into that lovely, homey environment). 

Her midnight walks soothed her, and she had enough of the Slytherin (or Gryffindor) ability to escape most of the trouble she created for herself relatively unscathed that she usually wasn't caught by anyone on the way out. It was a talent that she had inherited her fair share of from her father, even though everyone usually assumed that her brothers had gotten most of it. Sometimes she wasn't just the friendly, usually well-behaved child most of her teachers and everybody else who didn't know her well enough usually assumed she was, except for perhaps Dumbledore.

She came off as more tactful and kind than Ron because she was better at thinking first before she blurted out everything that was on the tip of her tongue (then again this wasn't saying much, as almost anyone was better than Ron at not being such a diarrhea mouth, even the twins). And she was a bit better behaved than the twins, usually not doing _that_ much against the school rules unless it was something that was important, like helping Harry in the Department of Mysteries last year. The fact that she wasn't quite as impulsive as her male siblings didn't keep her from doing something when she really set her mind to it, and here she was, about to enter the forbidden forest alone and of her free will for the first time, and Ron was hiding in his dormitory like the little baby her big brother could sometimes be, his face and especially his ears the color of his fire engine Quidditch robes.

She had to face this fear. She had become impatient with the constant distraction it presented her, the memory of this place as she had experienced it while under...his...influence. She had thought she had hidden those memories of his beneath layers upon layers of the good memories she had accumulated since that infamous first year of hers, buried them— dead or alive, she didn't care—deep beneath all the good things she had created for herself in her life that he would never become or experience. But ever since he had returned, the real him, not the tangled and intruding foreign thoughts that had stirred within her mind as they slowly took the place of hers, or the phantom with turquoise eyes that had appeared to her in the days right before he had taken her into the chamber—a memory of the human appearance he could have chosen to keep—she had not been able to keep him out of her mind.

It was not all of him, however, but one memory in particular that he had given her of this place that marked her like a brand that had been burned into her with his wand like cattle were marked with iron and fire. It was her Dark Mark, except it was in her mind, a single memory from her past and nothing more; it was not physical. Any mark he had left on her existed by a trick of her perception alone, and she was going to face it tonight in the place he had taken her four years ago, so she would never feel this helpless again, not even if she were to encounter Voldemort himself.

She suddenly veered from the safety of the Hogwarts grounds and into the watchful trees, her anger once again bubbling to the surface, giving her renewed resolve to carry out what she had come here to do. Her memory was in control, however, and it guided her to do the ritual in a way that was yet to be discovered by the rest of the community that would wish to know; she had been the only one with which he had shared his secret. Her mind recalled on a not-quite conscious level of thought the directions she had to twist, turn and zigzag her way along the green, easily trampled infant plants on the forest floor. Her precise, deliberately plodded path would have appeared nonsensical to anyone watching her, though it had it's purpose and she knew exactly where she was going and the number of steps of each detour she needed to take. If things like paths could ever be correctly described as eccentric, the path she was taking through the attentive forest and it's creatures definitely was that, and she suddenly halted her seemingly drunken, yet curiously calculated zigzagging after she finished counting her steps at the number that was important in the ancient runes she was tracing with her feet while doing this ritual: two hundred and twelve.

She found herself standing at the perimeter of a flat, elliptical clearing, nearly one hundred meters in diameter and surrounded by twisted and dying old growth trees thick enough to be older or just as old as the Hogwarts castle. They surrounded the moonlit sway of damp fingers of indigo grass in the biting fall wind, growing in a manner that eerily resemble gnarled hands reaching up into the sky as far as they could in order to be in the best position to embezzle the stars.

She started to trace an ellipse along the outside of the clearing, shadowing the steps she had already taken with her dainty, grass-stained child's feet on the chilly night before Halloween in her first year, when he had forced her to take his memory to this secret place. This was one thing he had made sure she had been fully conscious for, though she did not know why. He must have had some purpose other than sadism, because though it often didn't seem as though he did have other reasons to do the things he did to the untrained eye, she knew him better than to be fooled into thinking that his motives were ever that simple. Sure, his pleasure at other people's pain was a perversity that always colored his reason to a certain extent, but it had never been his only reason for doing anything, not even taking revenge on his own father.

She would have to contemplate his reasoning later, if she even needed to anymore; he would not answer her where he was now, and it was useless contemplating something that could not truly be known. She struggled not to lose count of her footsteps despite her momentary digression of concentration. If she did, the pattern of ancient runes she had been tracing with her steps would be lost, and the vast quantities of magic required for the ritual would ferment within her blood like a poison, unused and harmful. She would be forced to start over at the next half waning moon, too exhausted and sick to try the ritual again tonight. The normal spells she learned in class almost never had such side-effects, but nearly every one of his rituals that he had...required her assistance in whether she had wanted to give it or not...were exhausting if not deadly if they weren't gotten right on the first try or were interrupted at the wrong moment.

There was a sudden shift in the air's current too subtle to be called a breeze; it was winding through the air and making it's way through her hair in a not quite physical manner, it's movement not so much a movement as an added heaviness in the air around her that was increasing with such remarkable exponentiality that she thought it was a miracle she wasn't crushed by her own magic. At last she reached the destination of her spiraling footpath, setting her left foot down soundlessly in the center of the ellipse at the one hundred and sixty sixth step. A shiny bit of silver thread appeared out of somewhere invisible to her and dropped into her palm, the silky substance rubbing against her coarse, calloused fingertips, which were still tinted with the green leaves and the sticky sap of the less than friendly inhabitants of greenhouse three from her Herbology class today. This strand was special even for what it was, for this one was only there for those who knew how to look for it, and there were only two who knew his thoughts well enough to be able to summon them in Portkey form with this ritual.

She looked down at the—was it a silver silk wind of fine yarn, or a piece of Dumbledore's hair—she couldn't say which it resembled more—in the detached fascination and intoxicating terror of someone who has just recognized the first signs of a horrific, yet oddly enthralling scientific discovery. She wasn't sure what effect it was going to have on her to see that odd place he had taken her again, once the timed Portkey took effect. She hoped his...original incarnation hadn't thought to take sanctuary there again. She doubted that he would want anything to do with the place now. What he stood for was now a distended caricature of the normal scale extremity of belief was usually measured by, which his beliefs still had been within even when he had murdered Myrtle at sixteen.

She felt a sudden tug behind her navel and was not anywhere for a moment but in between, she could suppose, until she felt her feet re-root themselves in reality, and she was deposited onto the hard wood floor. She looked around. It was dustier than she remembered it, though not in some spots. The near invisible, delicate red hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood on end like feelers as if the air was highly charged with an excess of electricity, like it would have been before a lightening storm.

A pair of piercing turquoise eyes looked at her and into her in cold fascination as she struggled to gain her footing.

"I was wondering when you would show up," his seemingly eternally cold voice spoke softly and was laced with an eerie tenderness. He lifted his wand and pointed it at her before she could get her balance.

"Stupef—"

"Protego!" she got off just on time, trying to concentrate despite the emotions and memories colliding in her mind that were shattering her concentration into useless fragments. Her thoughts were in disarray for a second before she could even try to pull herself together enough to concentrate on her own survival.

She merely jumped out of the way as a second stunning spell singed hair and a layer of skin off her forearm. The red beam of light that was his spell had missed her, and the burn she had acquired was from being within two feet of his spell, which was giving off an amount of heat that was very unusual for a mere stunning spell. She was sure normal stunning spells were not supposed to act like curses under any circumstances, they were just supposed to stun you, but then again neither he nor his spells could have ever been classified as normal. Even the non Dark Arts spells that he cast were a little more destructive than they were originally created to be, because he was used to casting more predatory spells. The preferred concentration in his magical studies bled through into even the most harmless spells he cast when he had no reason to exhibit the self-control he needed to deceive anyone about what type of wizard he was.

"Ginny, I have to admit, I never thought you had the potential to become quite this proficient at—"

"Impedimenta!"

"Protego! –dueling. Stupefy!"

"Protego!"

"Protego!"

She jumped out of the way again as he reflected his spell back to her, not bothering to shield, the impact of the spell setting fire to the bookshelf behind her.

"Very funny, Tom, you would have made me give the diary to someone else if I hadn't had at least some—'

"Stupefy!"

"Protego! —potential. You aren't trying to kill me, Tom? You're loosing some of that ever appealing homicidal charm you usually possess."

"You don't need to know my reasons—what was that? Did you feel it? The shift of magic—" Tom froze in a way that reminded her of a carnivore that had sensed another predator stalking his prey.

"Stop trying to distract me, you sneaky git, I didn't feel any—"

"Foolish girl, be quiet and listen—" he hissed.

"Don't think you can order me around after attacking—"

"Silencio!" _--me_, she mouthed. _Not to mention feeding on my soul and happiness like a dementor in my first year,_ she thought venomously, while raising her wand to fend off any more spells that he might attempt to incapacitate her with. Then she realized that any shield charms she might try to block his spells with were likely to be drastically weakened because she was mute.

_Maybe I can do a Finite spell silently in order to cancel his silencing charm,_ she thought desperately. _In the meantime I'll just have to dodge whatever he throws at me. That will have to be enough to hold him off. I will not let him control me again._

"You never could stop blathering, Ginevra. Sharing your innermost secrets with someone you hardly knew is what got you ensnared in my diary so quickly and fully, and now your babbling has cost you this duel, and more," he said, letting out a high cold laugh that froze her where she was as it conjured up an image of the unnatural perversion of his human self he had become now, the remnant of the young, handsome boy in front of her who had yet to actually kill his father. It reminded her of who he would and had already become so forcefully that it made her, for the first time since seeing him again, truly afraid. A glint of amusement and perverse pleasure lit his eyes as he glimpsed her sudden fear before she could cover it up, guessing accurately at the cause of it. He laughed again.

"I am pleased to see that my older self, at least, conjures up such delectable terror in you, when I cannot. Very strange, since I am the one who almost succeeded at taking your life."

She just glared at him, too incensed to speak even if she had been able to.

"Seeing as you are mute for the first time in your life and can do nothing to resist, I am going to take your wand. You will come with me to check for intruders without struggling, or suffer the pain your Harry has suffered on the occasions he met my older self," he said, lifting his wand to do the Expelliarmus spell. Ginny tensed, preparing to dodge.

A floorboard creaked ever so slightly behind her right before ten voices shouted the stupefy spell at once, shocking her out of her desperate thoughts of escape. The sixth spell shattered the halfway-formed shield charm that Tom had been able to conjure in a split seconds' notice. A combination of Hogwarts professors and ministry officials surrounded the unconscious boy, and a furious looking Mr. Weasley approached his daughter, now trembling with the sudden departure of the adrenaline and anger that had sustained her throughout her duel with her former—acquaintance. She looked white and exhausted, and now that what had just happened was fully sinking in, like she was going into shock. Suddenly he couldn't bring himself to yell at his daughter for her impulsiveness—really, he would have expected better judgment from her at least, if not from his sons, but she would get it enough from Molly as it was, and what she needed was comforting right now. There would be time to teach her the lessons that could be learned from this later.

"Ginny, sweetheart, are you OK?" _OK, stupid question, Arthur._ "What happened?"

"Dad, I'm so sorry, I just wanted to confront my f-fear of this place—he took me here once and ever since he came back I have been having nightmares about it just like the summer after first year--but h-he was here! _Why_ was he here?" She hated how she sounded like a little girl again, how _he_ made her feel that way again.

"I don't know, honey, Dumbledore is going to give him Veritaserum as soon as the Aurors get him to the Headmasters' office."

"But dad, he isn't V-you-know-who, he's Tom, I—"

"Ginny, they're one in the same. You _know_ that. I thought that we...in your first year...Ginny, they're the _same_."

"I know! That's not what I meant. I know Tom and you-know-who are the same people! How could you think I'd still be that foolish—"

"I'm sorry, Ginny! I shouldn't have doubted you. I was just--"

"I know. You were just concerned. I—I'm sorry for snapping at you. I'm just so _upset_."

"It's OK, Ginny—"

"But—what I was trying to say, Dad, is...I don't know quite how to say this without the risk of you thinking I'm completely insane, but Dad, this Tom isn't the you-know-who that we have been fighting for the past two years."

"What do you mean?"

"I could feel him before I saw him."

"But honey..."

"How else do you explain it? He's the one from the diary. Voldemort may—"

"Ginny! Don't say his name!"

"He took control of my mind! He was trying to drain my life to sustain his own, and not just by stealing whatever makes us alive and infusing it into his memory, but by sucking out my soul and my happy memories just like a dementor would! What do I have to fear from him after that? Death in the traditional way, even by Cruciatus curse is preferable to being used like that, no matter who you are. It's what Azkaban does to you; it's what Tom was trying to do to me! All the while he was in my mind, I experienced every thought and emotion with which he tried to justify killing me! I have seen all of him; I have nothing left to fear! So why the hell shouldn't I say his name? It's not even his real name; it's an anagram, one of the only steps he was able to take while he was in school to transcend the supposed weakness of being human. _Pathetic_. Besides, Harry and Dumbledore say it, and you don't correct _them_."

"Ginny! Calm down...I'm sorry. I had no idea."

"Of course you didn't," she said in a somewhat less hysterical, yet bitter tone that had an almost resigned ring to it that scared him, "There is no way you could have known, as I didn't share every detail of this with you, or even with Mum. How do you tell somebody something like that? How is it even possible to share it?"

"Despite the near impossibility of doing so, I wish you would have. No one should have to go through that alone."

"I know; I'm sorry, I just didn't know how."

There was silence as they both let the shock of what had just transpired between them settle into their understanding of each other. There was a sudden uncomfortable closeness yet painful unfamiliarity between them, which divided them and made them feel uncomfortable around each other, yet bound them together in an understanding greater than they had ever shared. Neither knew what to say for a moment, but finally Ginny found the courage to voice her theory on the mystery of Tom Riddle's return, that in the past few minutes since her discovery of his continued existence she had haphazardly started piecing together.

"Voldemort..."she began tentatively, looking cautiously up at her father, who she noted in surprise barely flinched at hearing the name this time, let alone gave her a sign that he would reprimand her for saying it, "Voldemort may be immortal, but he wouldn't have been able to restore his youth that fully unless he created a new variation of the elixir of life. He didn't even know how to create the original, or else he wouldn't have had to use dark magic to gain his immortality. He also wouldn't have had to try and steal Nicholas Flamel's Philosophers' Stone, though if it were that alone it might have just been that he didn't have a body with which to try and create his own. So it must be the Tom Riddle from the diary. Tom Riddle was not as brilliant at anything as he was at Dark Magic, though he was a brilliant student all around, and alchemy—when pertaining to metal and not flesh, that is—was not among the strongest of his many talents."

"But Dumbledore said that the diary was destroyed when Harry skewered it with the Basilisk's fang."

"I know. But it's the only explanation I can think of. And if anyone could figure out how to repair that diary enough to bring his sixteen-year- old self out of it, it would be Voldemort. He did, after all, create it."

"But how could he even have the diary? Unless he stole it from Dumbledore, which I would have to say would be near impossible—"

"Well, Dad, now don't be angry, but he might have gotten it back—"

"WHAT? What do you mean he might—"

"Dumbledore gave it back to Harry, who gave it to Lucius Malfoy in order to trick him into setting Dobby free," she said in a garbled rush.

"WHAT!"

"Dad, he believed it to be dead and completely useless, and he put it in his sock in order to trick Lucius into throwing the sock to Dobby.

_Another example of how intents and choices are often the only things that separate a Slytherin style of thinking from a Gryffindor one,_ she thought.

"It's how Dobby got his freedom. There was no reason for him to believe that there was anything left that could be dangerous in the diary, as Dumbledore gave him his permission to give the Diary back to Malfoy."

"_Dumbledore_," Mr. Weasley spoke the headmasters name in a rage-laced tone. His face was becoming red and he was starting to swell in anger, strangely reminding Ginny of her mother when she was angry.

_Maybe people started to look like each other when they'd lived with each other too long_, she mused.

Her father got angry much less frequently than her Mum did, but when he did, it was for more significant things. Her mum, though more high strung and likely to snap at random people in order to vent her anger in general, expressed her anger in different situations and usually for less serious reasons than her father did, though more frequently. It was rare for her dad to become truly angry, but when he was, it was usually a good idea to stay out of his way. Nonetheless, she had to say something, so he didn't try to...duke it out with Dumbledore, or something stupid like that.

"Dad, he couldn't have known, he doesn't have enough knowledge of the Dark Arts to—" "He's Dumbledore. He had to have known."

"You can't just assume that!"

"Why not?"

"He is just a man."

"And you haven't been alive long enough to have actually witnessed what a cunning man your Headmaster actually is."

"Yes I—"

"He knew. He had to have known. When it comes to knowing this type of thing about—about L-Lord V-Voldemort, though he cannot always predict his actions, he knows how his mind works, and he had to have had a reason for letting Harry give that diary back to Lucius Malfoy. I'll kill him. _He could have killed you_."

"_Voldemort_ can't kill him, and don't talk about killing that casually when we are in the middle of a war! Dumbledore can't know everything! You are thinking like Moody!"

"I am not going to kill him, but he and I are going to have a little chat. Ginny, take this Portkey to the Hogwarts infirmary. I'll meet you there in a little while. I am going to Apparate directly to his office."

"But I don't want to go to the Infirmary. I want to go with you—"

"No!"

"I need to know what is going to happen to Tom and what you are planning to say to Dumbledore and how you followed my Portkey here—"

"All you need to know is how lucky you were that we did—"

"Well of course I—"

"I will meet you in the infirmary, and tell you how we followed you and anything else later. Take. The. Portkey."

"Fine!" she snarled, frustrated that her father, who usually had the common sense to know it was better to tell his children important information than leave them to make less well informed decisions without it, didn't understand how much she needed to know what was going on right now, or at least how much she didn't want to be alone.

He sighed, looking into her accusing bright brown eyes as they faded into the rubble-strewn background of the dusty cabin that was decorated with a strange assortment of mundane muggle and esoteric wizarding inventions, some of which he recognized, some of which he wished he didn't.

Authors Note:  
  
I am such a nerd that I have probably read, Hogwarts, a History, as many times as Hermione has (lol). Poor Arthur, however, is too flustered to be thinking straight at the end of this chapter, and so will forget that no one can Apparate inside the Hogwarts grounds—which he has known since he was a little boy—until he tries (ouch). Sorry if I confused some people with that last part. The inability to clarify things like that right away is one of the disadvantages of not having a story completely done before it is posted. As I did not have chapter two completed when I first posted chapter one, nor do I now (or I would have posted that chapter along with this extra note), I was not able to explain the reason behind Arthur's slip of memory in a prompt manner without ruining the flow of the story. I decided to add this authors' note, however, as I realized belatedly that not giving a proper explanation might detract from the perceived quality of the story. 


	2. Through Extra Eyes

Ah! I uploaded the wrong version of this chapter, the one from before my beta-reader worked her beta-readery magic on it. The other one had grammar mistakes, and mistypings! Noooo! I have had to barricade myself within my house, because Voldemort's poltergeist is trying to kill me, for depicting a story in which he appears in a way that does not satiate his anal-retentive, nerdy Head Boy dislike for errors.

Dear Tom. M. Riddle: I am flattered to have elicited such a prompt response directly from the Dark Lord's adolescent representative (see reviews). You are indeed much more attractive than your adult counterpart. Despite your good looks, however, and subpoena or no, I find it much more amusing to continue to represent you in a way that you loathe, as your rather inaccurate view of your own actions is one of the reasons I am intrigued by you, and is one of the reasons I am writing this fic. And please tell your wife, "Thank you", for me, as I would much rather die later than now.

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters, nor the basis of my plot, which is the Harry Potter Novels. If I were J.K Rowling, I would definitely not be writing fanfiction. I also am not making money off of anything below.

Thank you to my wonderfully insane beta-reader Betsy; without her anal retentive attention to detail where grammar is concerned, Voldemort's poltergeist would rape me, and I would die (doesn't Tom Riddle seem like the type who would get overly upset where grammar mistakes are concerned? It is (was) an inside joke between Betsy and I, that if either one of us makes a grammar mistake, Voldemorts poltergeist would take great offense. Er...don't ask.).

Also, to anyone who is wondering, the Hogwarts, a History detail from the last chapter is explained in the second part of this one.

In sleep he sang to me,

in dreams he came...

that voice which calls to me

and speaks my name...

And do I dream again?

For now I find

the Phantom of the Opera is there—

inside my mind...

Those who have seen your face

draw back in fear...

(An excerpt from the musical, The Phantom of the Opera, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart)

**Through Extra Eyes**

Harry Potter watched from beneath the folds of his invisibility cloak in incrementing apprehension as Ginny Weasley finally halted her bizarre, macabre spiraling dance of arcane precision in the middle of the ghost-silver field of wave like, dew-beaded grass. There was something that...tasted or felt, he wasn't sure which...inherently unnatural and wrong about the ritual she had now come so close to completing; with each footstep she had taken, he had felt his skin crawl anew; it had felt to him like spiders were skittering up his spine, to the base of his neck and back down again, making his hair stand on end in inexplicable unease.

The dance of the ritual had turned her like a puppet without visible strings, had thrown her into its turns like a doll with all animation sucked dry from once vivacious, life filled eyes. What was left when she had danced had been something that had no understanding of life, or love, or hate. It just existed, interminably within its plastic shell. Upon halting her bizarre dance, some small semblance of who he had come to know in the last year or so, since she had started talking around him, as Ginny Weasley...the vivacity, the intuitiveness, the reason others seemed to implicitly trust her...returned to her face and eyes as he could sense her listening and waiting for something that evidently no one but she had the understanding and perspective to sense before it was present. The ritual dance of her silent, delicate footsteps seemed at once to him a masterpiece of puppet choreography, and a dance of the tragedy of life diminished by a holding, stilling memory, a memory stifling writhing life within its grasp. Harry felt a sudden uneasiness float upon him with the chill of a distant dementor, quickly followed by a stab of his scar. A memory? Where had he equated the ritual with some type of memory? Where had that thought originated? Or in whom had it originated, was actually the better question. He had had one too many experiences with a malignant memory, not his own ...

Something clicked in his mind, and he grasped out for her, his unfounded fear that she wasn't safe gripping him suddenly, but before he could act on his instincts, a glint of light that he saw out of the corner of his eye distracted him.

Something silver was dripping from the raven, velvety sky like a liquid moonbeam. Liquid light spilled into Ginny's open, porcelain palm, slowly solidifying into a strand of gossamer yarn, seemingly infused with a misty, ethereal silver glow.

Harry paled as he recognized the materialized thought for what it was. The thought, like everything else about the ritual, repulsed him for a reason that was enigmatic to his understanding, and a wave of sickly dread rose in him as he laid his eyes on it. The apprehension provoked in him by his well-used instincts was nettled and inflamed further into fear by the unknown quality of the cause of her unusual behavior, coupled with the unusually biting sting of his scar. Forgetting the trick he had been planning to play on her when he had followed her out here, he reached for Ginny, fearing, for some reason, that she would vanish from him or come to harm and that something irreversible would happen to her if he let her go alone. When his hand was a mere breadth away from hers, what he had dreaded and somehow predicted became a reality. She vanished from the field, vapor and air the only thing he clutched in his sweaty grasp.

Not knowing anything he could do for her himself now, the part of him that always stayed sensible when things like this transpired compelled him to run as fast as he could to Dumbledore's office, never mind the late hour and the fact that he would most likely get in trouble for wandering around this late at night. He saw the looming castle grow larger and come up upon him as he dizzily ascended the grounds and then the steps. The craggy corridors whirred by, and the thought of why he had followed her in the first place loomed in his mind and followed his progress through the halls and his mind as obsessively as the fact that she had vanished. He had been there, and he still hadn't been able to prevent her disappearance, whether it had been willing or whether she had been kidnapped; he could not discern which it had been with the limited information he possessed.

He had at first followed her because he had wanted to play a trick on her...see how high she would jump if he were to sneak up on her, invisible, while pretending to be the Bloody Baron, or some other insidious Hogwarts specter. At least that had been what he had first convinced himself. He had actually followed her because he was lonely, he had soon realized. He had been wandering the halls like one of the ghosts since the beginning of the year, and sometimes outside too, too troubled to sleep, simultaneously attempting to think and not think of The Prophecy and what it entailed. He hadn't wanted to wake Ron and Hermione, and ask them to join him in his nighttime wanderings. This was his problem, and he didn't want to deprive them of sleep because of it.

Besides, they were much too observant for his liking already, even without certain knowledge of just how often he was too restless to sleep the night through. Hermione would think it was about Sirius, and try to talk to him about it, and Ron would just look at him suspiciously, guessing too accurately for Harry's liking that his unease had its root in something else entirely. Harry didn't know why Ron had decided to use his one profound insight into human nature on him, but he felt strangely flattered, as well as annoyed and uncomfortable with the fact. His best friend's suspicious, sometimes randomly and disconcertingly accurate questioning was irksome, not only because his suspicions were well founded, but because Harry was not in the least ready to tell his friends about the Prophecy, not until he had integrated it into his own brain, come to terms with the necessity of choosing between two seemingly impossible options.

He had seen Ginny wandering the halls before, and had guessed that her reasons for being up that late were much the same as his. He had guessed that she was seeking peace from those reasons, which they were both constantly reminded of every morning with the arrival of the papers and the talk in school, now that Voldemort was not only back, but active as a consistent, malignant presence in Wizarding society. She, too, had had her mind invaded in a very personal way by Voldemort, and since he did not think she would want to be disturbed in her almost nightly escapes from the happenings of the outside world which regularly involved _him_, he had never bothered her in her late night walks, deliberately choosing a route that he could see, from the Marauder's Map, that she was not taking. Tonight, however, he had followed her almost without realizing he was doing so at first, an unconscious urge to end his solitude overtaking him with unprecedented intensity. He had needed to spend his time with someone, suddenly, even if it was just Ron's little sister, someone who he didn't know especially well.

Dizzily, he was ripped from his thoughts as he came around the last corner and set his eyes on the entrance to Dumbledore's office; his feet had carried him to the stone gargoyle out of habit almost without him realizing it. The gargoyle bowed and moved out of the way when he came directly in front of it before he could shout the password. He barely paused in action or thought to ponder this strange behavior, and ran up the stairs as hastily as he could force his legs to carry him, opening the door without knocking.

"Professor! Professor! Prof—" he stopped mid-word as he realized after searching the pitch black room frantically but carefully with his eyes that there was no one there; the office was empty, even of Fawkes. The coals in the fire, however, were still smoking. Harry wondered if Dumbledore had traveled somewhere by Floo Powder.

Puzzled, and berating himself for not checking his father's map before, he pulled out the Marauder's map to ascertain the location of the absent Headmaster.

A dot with a label of, "Albus Dumbledore," was nowhere to be found on the map, on any of the floors, in any of the rooms or secret passageways. One name did catch his eyes at the top corner of a room, however, and made the breath catch in his throat and not make it all the way to his lungs for a moment.

"Ginevra Weasley? That has to be Ginny. There's no other...unless I don't know of some distant cousin, or something...no, it has to be..." he mumbled to himself. Shaking his head to clear it, for he felt slightly disconcerted and off balance from all of the strange things that had happened tonight without any clearly visible reason, he turned and rushed out of the room, forgetting the strange absence of Albus Dumbledore, and ran to the infirmary to talk to the one who seemed to be the focal point of all these strange occurrences.

---------

Arthur sighed, looking into his fifteen year old daughter's accusing bright brown eyes as they faded into the rubble-strewn background of the dusty cabin that was decorated with a strange assortment of mundane muggle and esoteric wizarding inventions, some of which he recognized, some of which he wished he didn't.

_What is the importance of this place to He-Who Must—oh, bugger it, to Lord Voldemort? What made Ginny come here, when she has never attempted memories in this manner before? It just isn't like her to be so easily lured into something like this after what she went through,_ he rambled to himself, partially to keep his mind off the contents of the room he was in, partially to keep himself from thinking too long on how, if he and the others had arrived at the cabin a moment later, he might have lost his youngest child forever.

_Why is it always my youngest two? They are always the ones drawn into these things. Why? They are too young! My oldest children, at least, would be better able to defend themselves in the situations Ron and Ginny get themselves into!_

_Then is it right to say that I would rather Bill or Charlie face Lord Voldemort? Many full-grown wizards have faced him and died! They wouldn't be any better off. Would I rather my older children die than my younger children? I wouldn't! I don't want any of them to die! Why do any of them even have to be in danger of dying in some unnatural way at their young ages? How is that fair?_

_Calm down and stop panicking Arthur, or you'll start sounding like a woman,_ he scolded himself, and a mere second after the thought passed through his mind it conjured up the slightly scary but also endearing vision of both his wife and his daughter turning red in the face from berating him were that thought ever to escape his lips. The humor this image conjured in this less than humorous situation sparked in his chest for a moment and then died, its sudden absence causing him to laugh in a hollow, grating manner that echoed in his ears and sunk into his thoughts in the surreal manner of a darkening spiral, the little mirth that his laughter might have held at first gradually bled dry by his deepening unease. His own mirthless laughter gave him a shiver that made him feel a cold thrill of ice had slipped beneath his skin and started gnawing on his bones. His teeth started to chatter, and as he realized he was, on the surface at least, taking his daughter's near death experience much worse than Ginny herself was, he did the only thing he could to distract himself, and that was focus on his anger at Dumbledore, and at this...Tom person, or whatever it was the Dark Lord used to call himself.

Taking one last disdainful look around the neglected cabin at its insidious decor, he concentrated on picturing Dumbledore's office in his mind as clearly as he could remember it, down to the very last shattered magical contraption, and discarded, half finished lemon drop. He pictured himself being there, just as one was supposed to do in order to Apparate, but just after he felt himself leave the prison close walls of the wooden cage, he felt the weight of both of the spaces he was occupying crush him at once. First he felt the crush of a barrier that was trying to push him back to the space he had only partially left. He felt himself collide with the substantial weight it seemed to possess, though it was not physical; he was sure the wall that blocked his path of Apparation was stronger and more permanent than any physical wall could possibly be. Then he felt a second weight squeeze and bend whatever he was made up of smaller than it was supposed to be for a split second as his body was forced back into the space that the surrounding air had already rushed into when he had left it for that short period of time.

_Why can't I do it? I was lucky I wasn't splinched! But why...why can't I Apparate to Dumbledore's office? I didn't even fail the first time I took my test; this doesn't make any..._

_The Apparation wards! Nobody can enter or leave the grounds of Hogwarts by Apparation or Disapparation, no muggle can see the castle for what it really is, no muggle devices can work within five miles of the castle and ten if it is a device that is a danger to_...he started reciting the passage on Hogwarts security from his History of Magic textbook mentally, which a still alive but elderly and incurably boring Professor Binns had made him memorize his first year at Hogwarts.

Angry for letting himself become so upset as to forget such an elementary bit of information, he Apparated to the outskirts of Hogsmeade, just outside the Hogwarts gates guarded by regal winged boars.

He saw and heard almost nothing as he was ascending to the Headmaster's office, though he thought, vaguely, that a few people he regularly talked to otherwise might have hailed him on his way to the lone gargoyle statue. As he reached it, the gargoyle jumped aside of its own accord without waiting for Arthur to give it the password. When he stood there, his mouth hanging open in surprise for a moment at the stone gargoyle's suddenly autonomous seeming intelligence, the gargoyle made an impatient gesture at him to hurry up the stairs. Still staring a bit rudely at the previously stoic, mostly inanimate statue, Arthur took the gargoyle's advice and proceeded to take the stairs two at a time, not caring if he was acting like a teenage version of himself in the midst of his haste. Arthur surprised himself at his own disrespect, though, when he found himself walking through the door without knocking, not really caring at the moment whether or not his old Headmaster had anything better to do than listen to him rant.

The office was completely devoid of noise when he entered it, as if somebody had put a freezing charm on the usual rush of activity that poured through there with near continuity. There were no visitors for once; the Headmaster was sitting quite alone behind his ornate, claw-footed mahogany desk as if expecting someone. Where was Tom Riddle? Hadn't the Aurors told him that they were going to take Tom to Dumbledore's office as soon as they arrived at Hogwarts, as he was the only person that Madam Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, trusted to be able to keep such a powerful, if young, prisoner under control?

His train of thought slowly and reluctantly returned to the aged man in front of him, who sat contemplating him silently, patiently waiting for him to speak. Arthur's eyes were drawn into the sky blue ones as if summoned there by some unheard spell. The usually hypnotically twinkling, azure orbs were devoid of their eccentric, semi-mischievous gleam, and were as grave as they had been the night Dumbledore had told The Order that he had revealed the contents of The Prophecy to Harry.

Now that he was under the scrutiny of those discerning blue eyes, half of what he had been bursting to say sounded childish and irrational to him, even in his mind.

He suppressed a shiver as the Headmaster continued to visually dissect him, and the forceful, yet empathetic stare intimidated him enough, whether it was meant to or not, to make him pause and choose his words more carefully than he had been intending to, before articulating what was on his mind. He returned the Headmaster's stare in silence before he found the courage to speak.

"You let Harry give the Diary back to Malfoy. That's why my daughter was almost killed tonight."

"Arthur...about that, I am truly sorry. Please let me explain."

"Go ahead." _Do your best,_ he thought, but managed to keep the brazen retort from slipping past his self-restraint and escaping his mouth.

"Thank you. It is quite simple what Tom did to deceive me, really. Simple, but brilliant. As a mere precaution against getting convicted for his illegal activities if caught, he cast a mutated illusion charm around the diary, which made it seem to have the magical and physical properties of an object that had been completely destroyed by magic when touched by the skin of certain people he designated the spell to recognize. I was one of those he taught the charm to recognize. So, though the diary was physically damaged, I could not detect that the spell that had made Tom's memories animate was only partially unraveled, or that the memories in the diary were still completely intact within it's pages, with any spells of my own."

"So when you touched the diary, this...illusion charm took affect? How do you know that's what happened?"

"What I know, I found out from the bits and pieces of the truth I was able to glimpse inside Tom's mind when I was questioning him. He has not yet become proficient at Occlumency at sixteen, but guarding his secrets has always come so naturally to him that he is proficient enough at hiding what he is thinking to veil some of his thoughts from me without having to study how to do so. I...am truly sorry, Arthur. I should have been more careful, but at the time four years ago, when Lord Voldemort was not as much of a threat as he had been and now is again, seemed more important to let Harry save Dobby from a lifetime of torment with the Malfoys than to worry about a diary that to me seemed to have lost all its magical properties, and therefore its potential danger. But those are excuses. Let us not dwell on excuses. The point is, Arthur, that I am sorry I couldn't have prevented what happened tonight."

Arthur took a deep breath, burning his lungs with incendiary anger that seemed to fill them as he breathed, in place of oxygen. His hands, then his entire body started to shake slightly, and he couldn't bring his muscles under his own control again and still them, no matter how hard he tried.

"It is not your fault. It's not. It's _his_!"

"Arthur..."

"What's going to happen to him! He tried to take Ginny from me for the second time, tonight! I'll—what kind of person would—what's wrong with him! He appears on the surface a young, brighter than normal intellectual teenage boy—innocent! But when he opens his mouth...you didn't hear him speak to Ginny, he was talking about stealing her soul and using her life as if she wasn't even human, he was discussing the incident in first year the way any normal person would talk of preparing dinner! What type of person would be able to talk about taking someone's life so casually? It's like he'd been thinking of killing her since he had been a small child, the way he spoke, it seemed so innately part of his nature to want to—"

"Arthur, and what would you have suspected from someone who grew up to become Lord Voldemort? Did you think he came to his destiny in life suddenly? He gradually became who he is today. The boy you saw is merely an earlier stage of the...no longer quite human entity that haunts the nightmares of little children and adults alike."

"Is he even human now? God, Albus, he tried to rob my little girl from me, I'll kill him—"

"Arthur, you'll do nothing of the sort! He's only one year older than Ginny, the same age as your son Ron! Granted, if it was the adult version of him, I would not argue with you, but the prisoner in the back of my office, surrounded by a half dozen Aurors threatening to take his life in the most excruciating way possible, is sixteen! There is a reason we don't send children to Azkaban!"

"What are you going to do the next time he takes another life! He's too powerful to contain, and too different from the rest of the human race to change! I am a firm believer that once you murder somebody, there is no going back to the person you were, the way you were before then! How will you feel about Azkaban when he continues the pattern he started with Myrtle? Do you think that this particular child can even feel the effect of Dementors the way a normal child could, anyway? His adult self can control them—"

"Of course—"

"So obviously at some point they started to sustain him, rather than make him weaker—"

"Yes, and how intelligent would it be to place someone in the care of dementors, who may or may not be able to bend them to his every whim? I am almost certain that Tom will not have learned to do that—_yet_, but he still could. Besides, it is against the International Treatise of Human Rights signed by the Minister of Magic in nineteen-seventy-four to incarcerate anyone under seventeen in a Dementor controlled facility—"

"So will you blindly follow every law even if it is more prudent to break it in the interest of the safety of innocent children?"

Albus fought the urge to be immature and role his eyes, and ended up just staring down his former student as if visually dissecting him with his gaze. Arthur Weasley knew every bit of Wizarding and Muggle Law on Human Rights better than anyone he knew besides perhaps himself and a few other members of the Wizengamot. His staunch belief in Human Rights that caused him to excel at his job in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office was being severely tested right now, but Arthur was, like all of the Weasley's except for Percy, highly emotional and impulsive. He would be ready to kill Tom for perhaps a few days, but would reason himself out if it, and revert to his usual forgiving, laid back personality in an indecently short period of time. Albus had seen Arthur go through this cycle of temper and humility more times than he had cared to during Arthur's school years, and from what he had seen of him more recently through their mutual work with the order, this part of Arthur's personality hadn't changed all that drastically.

"I wrote that particular part of the Treatise, so no, I am not following it blindly," Albus heard himself say flatly, still staring his former student down with a quelling look, "and though Tom is not in any way innocent, he is still, under law, a child, and shall be treated as such by the Wizengamot—at least he will be now that Cornelius and a few of his cohorts have been removed from their seats because of corruption."

"Please explain to me, though, why you would choose his life over the lives of those he may endanger!"

"I will explain my reasoning to you, to the best of my ability. Will you listen without interrupting?"

"What—of course."

"Thank you. My reasoning is simply based on statistics, and what I have learned over time as a professor. I am sure you have noticed it also, having raised so many wonderful children. Until people are about seventeen, they have yet to develop and solidify many of the patterns of belief and thought and feeling that make adults so sure that they are always right; younger people are, therefore, easier to influence and maybe even change. Though it may be impossible to alter the personalities of some people even slightly, the chance that they can be taught to think and see life differently is still much greater when they are younger. The older they are, the more of their personality is permanent. People who continue to commit crimes in their twenties after having already broken the law as a teenager are in most cases more likely to continue their behavior into their thirties than people who simply have a juvenile offense, but none in their first decade of adulthood. Those statistics are why it has become illegal in most civilized wizarding countries, except for in some states within the United States, to incarcerate people under seventeen in Dementor guarded prisons."

"Y—yes, I know. I've read your law, and I've read the reasons behind it. I know the International Treatise of Human Rights back to front, but I just can't agree with you right now! Maybe you can't know what I'm talking about, because you've never almost lost a child to another child only—as you said—one year older than her. I can't think about this any more. I _can't_. Where...where is Molly?" Arthur asked Albus weakly. Every ounce of his body was pulsating with a keen and bloodless apathy, which was all that was left in him, he felt, to replace his extinguished joy and belief in the innocence and order of the world that had still been left intact by the onslaught of time even this late in his life.

"She's with Ginny in the Infirmary."

"I would like to see them. Make sure they're OK."

"Of course," Dumbledore said, standing and ushering Arthur out the door. Arthur obediently started down the spiraling stairs and stepped out into the stone hallway. The sharp sound of his own footfall echoed weirdly in his ears, disorientating him.

"On our way, we do have one more bit of information to touch upon, however," Dumbledore continued. "The Aurors wish to question your daughter."

"What? Why?"

"I explained to them that Ginny never had any willing connection with Tom Riddle or Lord Voldemort, so they will probably be civil, but it is part of their procedure to question everyone involved in a case."

"Yes, well, they better be civil. They will question them separately, I assume?"

"They are planning on using Veritaserum to question Tom shortly after they finish questioning Ginny."

"They are using Veritaserum to question Ginny? They can't do that, it's illegal!"

"It is not illegal to use it on Tom, remember? But they will not be using it on Ginny."

"Yes, I remember the law. They changed it after so many of the Death Eaters got off on their charges during the Death Eater trials of 1981 by saying they were under the Imperious curse. Since February of 1982, Aurors have been allowed to use Veritaserum in interrogations when a suspect is arrested for a violent felony."

"They will use a truth potion on Ginny that allows her to choose whether or not to be affected by the potion even after the alternate view of reality that the potion creates has taken effect, but which still allows the Aurors to know if she is letting it work or not. That way it is not classified as a Class A Restricted Use Mind-Control Potion like Veritaserum is. It also has a more pleasant taste than Veritaserum does. Tastes a bit like lemonade, actually."

"Well, that's lucky. Wouldn't want a forcibly ingested truth potion to taste too bad, now would we?"

"No, I'd say that would be quite horrible. Ah, here we are, the Infirmary."

"One more thing before we go in. Did Tom use some spell to take advantage of her need to conquer her fears, to make her act on an impulse she wouldn't have normally acted upon?"

"I don't know; I have yet to examine her. From what the others described of her actions, it does not appear that she was under the Imperius Curse, though, as you were probably able to discern when you talked to her. There is a spell, however, that would have compelled her to listen to her strongest suppressed impulse. I will have to test her for any lingering traces of it."

"Yes, well...Albus, sorry for yelling at you, I'm just—"

"It's quite alright Arthur. I understand completely. Let's go and see your wife and child, shall we? I believe you have been from their presence quite long enough."

"Thanks," he said, and without waiting for a response, he opened the door to the infirmary and rushed inside, not wanting to look at the Headmaster fully in the eyes because, no matter how polite the Headmaster was to him about it, he was still slightly embarrassed by his recent onslaught of semi-childish behavior. Dumbledore smiled knowingly, and followed him inside.


	3. Veritas

I'm sorry I took so long to post this. My work load is a little lighter this semester, so I was able to. My beta-reader's isn't, however (ancient Hebrew is evidently lacking in all forms of logic that we generally expect from languages, and is therefore quite difficult), so if anyone sees any errors, please point them out to me, and my appologies.

JK Rowling owns everything to do with Harry Potter! I am not making any money of of this! Disclaim! disclaim! caws the disclaiming bird. Ehem. Yes, well, anyway. On with the story.

**Chapter Three: Veritas**

_He looked like a young man  
But his eyes were old.  
He touched me gently  
But his hands were cold. _

_His voice was calm  
But he was hunting for prey.  
I started feeling dizzy,  
And he watched me sway._

_He stared at me with eyes black as coal,  
The man who swallowed my soul.  
The morning air  
And the sunlight he stole,  
The man who swallowed my soul…_

…_He said his kiss would make me whole,  
The man who swallowed my soul.  
The breath of life  
From my lips he stole,  
The man who swallowed my soul._

_An excerpt from the song, "The Man Who Swallowed My Soul", preformed by Persephone _

Ginny arrived in the infirmary and promptly fell face down on the cold, sterile floor, her weak frame giving out on her, despite her best efforts to steady herself after her unbalanced, whirlwind arrival. She just lay there for a moment, not wanting to get up, yet not wanting to stay where she was, either. A lump was forming in her throat, and tears of anger and shame filled her eyes with an unwelcome sting before she could suppress them. She made a small sound filled with disgust and hopelessness, and angrily swiped them away.

"No!" she growled, tearing at the skin of her arms with her nails. "No! I won't let you affect me again! I will not let you! I hate you! I don't want these memories!I want what you took from me back!You could have killed Harry--everyone I--I hate you!"

"Ginny?" came a tentative, but appalled appeal from the direction of the doorway. Ginny whipped her head around to face the unwelcome intruder, hastily clambering from her spot on the floor as she searched the unnervingly blank room for a sign of life other than herself. That voice seemed so familiar, but still…there was no one there. Was she going mad?

As if in direct response to her question, a shimmer of silver fabric caught the minimal light in the room, and first Harry's head, then the rest of him, emerged from under the cover of his invisibility cloak.

"Harry? What are you doing here? I…" she broke off, horrified that he had witnessed such an outburst of such blatant weakness from her. Like he needed to be bothered with anyone else's problems, when he had more than her entire family, combined. She was used to being strong in front of him, because she knew from her own experiences in dealing with trauma, as well as from observing him, that after the events of the last few years it was more difficult for him then people who hadn't been through something similar could comprehend, to deal with or understand anyone's distress but his own. Now she eyed him wearily, afraid that hearing words from her mouth that were probably so close to what was always on his mind would either enrage or break him. Fortunately, all she saw in his expression was a brief flicker of raw, honest pain before it was replaced abruptly and completely with concern just as intense and honest.

"Ginny, are you OK? What happened? What did _he _do to you?"

"It wasn't Voldemort, Harry, it was" she broke off as his eyes widened in surprise when she said his name, "it was Tom, from the diary. I can't believe I was so stupid, again! But I thought it was impossible, I thought he was gone--"

"I thought it was too, Dumbledore said I'd destroyed him for good…I'm sorry, Ginny!" he exclaimed, a sudden burst of anguish and guilt in his words.

"It's not your fault, I shouldn't have fallen for it the second time--"

"Well, I fell for his trap more than once, too, you know, put all of you in danger, and killed my godfather! At least nobody died because of what you did!" he shouted in a sudden passion, then clasped his hands to his mouth, backing away from her ever so slightly, as if he hadn't meant to say that.

"Harry, you didn't kill him! Don't say it! It was his fault and Bellatrix's, don't think for a minute that it was yours! Don't you think that Sirius felt just as responsible for your parent's death? You wouldn't have wanted him to blame himself,would you-"

"Look who's talking! Look what you were just saying! If it's not my fault, than it certainly isn't yours!" he exclaimed, running his fingers through his hair in agitation, and then turning to stare at her in surprise, shocking himself with the truth and clarity of his own words, not really ready to hear it from anyone yet, not even himself. He turned his back to her, his expression suddenly transported with grief, a wild, trapped look in his eyes. She knew exactly how he felt, and yet knew nothing of it. Some of his experiences were alien to her, thank Merlin, but some were so close to her heart that she felt as if she had experienced them herself. And she _had _experienced something very similar to what he was going through, the guilt of knowing he'd been used, tricked into endangering other people's lives, but her actions, miraculously, had caused no lasting damage, and so she could not know the extent of his grief and guilt. She could not know how it was to feel responsible for killing someone she loved; Sirius had been the closest thing to a parent that he had ever known, aside from her mother.

She wanted to hold him, say that it would be all right, but she felt she didn't know him well enough to do so, despite having spent most of every summer with him ever since she had been eleven, and felt a sharp pang of regret and loss as she realized how little _she _knew him despite her entire family's closeness to him, shaking her head in wonder and a little bit of disgust at her previous uncharacteristic timidity around the complex person she had belatedly discovered existed behind the mask of the seemingly perfect, archetype of a hero that had saved her from death in her first year. Instead she decided to attempt to comfort him with words alone, hoping it would be enough.

"Harry, I…guess I--" she broke off, forcing herself to believe the words she was about to say, to say them with more conviction than she had started to, "I was wrong to say it was my fault, because I would never say it was yours! If you hadn't been lured into that trap the first time, I would have died! I owe you my life, Harry, so don't let what Hermione said last year get to you! You wouldn't be you without your "saving people thing", it's what makes people love you so much, so don't you dare regret what you did, don't you dare regret that part of you!"

"So you heard that?" he said, laughing hollowly. The smile that stretched on his face was more of a painful grimace, and his eyes shone with grief, and despair equally as hollow as his laugh.

"Well, you weren't exactly hard to hear," she said in an amused tone, suddenly needing to lighten the situation, both for herself and for him. It wouldn't do either of them any good to just brood like this; she knew it hadn't helped him at all when he had been stuck alone for the last two summers with nothing to keep him company but his thoughts, and dwelling on things that she couldn't change certainly hadn't helped her any in the past.

He smiled at her reluctantly, the haunted look not completely dispelled from his gaze.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that, yelling at you last year…at everybody. I wasn't exactly myself…er, I mean…I suppose I was, but--"

"I understand, Harry."

"Good, 'cause I'm rubbish at apologies."

"If you do don't stop being so hard on yourself and other people, though, I _will _hex you."

He looked up at her, his eyes still suspiciously bright, but glinting with amusement, now, and not grief.

"I'll keep that in mind, 'cause from what I've heard from Fred and George, I wouldn't want to get in the way of your Bat Boogie Hex--and it must really be something, if it even made an impression on them. I would have liked to have seen what you did to Malfoy, though."

"Should I stage a demonstration?" she said, smiling mischievously, the twinkle of amusement in her eyes oddly reminding him of Dumbledore.

They both laughed with genuine warmth for the first time they had seen each other that night, and then Harry gradually sobered, her momentary resemblance to Dumbledore (sans flowing, floor-length, silver beard) recalling him to the reality of the situation, and the reason they were both in the hospital wing at the moment. His smile and laughter gradually faded, but so did the guilt and despair that had been brought to the surface again when he had first seen her prostrated on the floor, screaming the exact things that had been spinning around and around in his head for months now. It was disorienting, seeing someone else accomplish in a few seconds what he had been trying for months to do, but he was not good at telling other people what he felt…it was pointless, burdening people like that…they didn't want to hear it most of the time, anyway.

Besides, though he envied her for her courage, he felt oddly protective of Ginny _because _she had the courage to be vulnerable, and could afford to let her guard down (though he knew she would be furious if she thought he thought she needed protection). That overt display of raw desperation and anger had taken him back in time, and she had been eleven again in his eyes, prostrated like the sacrifice she was intended to be at the foot of Slytherin's statue, with the shade of Tom Riddle watching the increasingly shallow rise and fall of her breath with hungry eyes. As he'd watched her unnoticed for those few seconds, she had reminded him so much more of the girl he'd saved from Tom Riddle in his second year who kept putting her elbow in the butter dish every time she saw him than of the girl that had followed him fearlessly to the Department of Mysteries last year, and had seemingly been unable to or unwilling to stop herself from telling him off when he was being…well, a bit difficult. She still evidently trusted herself too much, even after everything she had been through--just like he did, and, like him, couldn't bring herself to not trust her own instincts for long. This got her in trouble--Merlin knew it had gotten him in trouble enough times, but sometimes being impulsive and taking the responsibility of resolving situations yourself was necessary in order to continue living honestly.

He couldn't believe he had never seen this part of himself in Ginny, and felt a sudden kinship with her, because few people could understand that there were a few certainties about life that couldn't be accepted as certainties if the world was to carry on with any dignity. One of those certainties was the fear people like Voldemort would always use to try to crush people. People just couldn't accept that fear, let it hold them back and limit them, or Voldemort would have already won, and Harry suddenly felt as if Ron's little sister was one of the few people who was capable of understanding that. Scratch that. He suddenly felt that _Ginny _was one of the few people who could understand how important it was not to be controlled by certain fears. He emphasized her name in his mind. He couldn't just go around thinking of her as Ron's little sister all the time if they were to be friends, and it certainly seemed, as of late, as if they were becoming friends.

He had a feeling that he would find being friends with her a lot easier now that she had stopped squeaking every time he talked to her. Not that he hadn't liked her before, it was just that, all the squeaking tended to get in the way of productive conversation. Despite his legitimate excuse for not really seeing her as a separate entity from Ron before now, he suddenly felt as stupid as Ron must have felt when he finally realized Hermione was a girl, except this time the question wasn't, "you're a girl?", it was "you're a human being, and have an identity apart from 'Ron's little sister'?", which, he felt, was infinitely worse.

Shaking his head in renewed amusement, he decided it was time to stop avoiding the subject, to stop feeling guilty as she had suggested, and ask her what _he _had done to her now. It was nothing he could have prevented, he adamantly told himself, while attempting to banish the terrifying memory of her vanishing into thin air, leaving him behind with nothing but vapor in his grasp, helpless to do anything to help her.

"I certainly wouldn't miss it, but it'll have to be later. I hate to break the reverie that imagining a certain ferret getting hit with a Bat Boogey Hex tends to cause, but…I have to ask?"

"What did Tom do, this time?" She laughed humorlessly.

"Er…yeah."

"Didn't try to kill me this time, miraculously--I honestly don't know why--he always seemed so fond of it. He just tried to stun me a few times."

"Stun you? But why, unless he needed you for something?"

"I haven't figured that out yet. Do you have any ideas?"

"I…don't have much information to go on. Why were you out there in the first place?"

"I--oh, this sounds so stupid now! I wanted to conquer my fears--"

"That is _not _stupid, Ginny. What of?"

She just stared at him.

"Well, besides him, obviously."

"Of--of somewhere he forced me to go in my first year," she said unsteadily, not looking him in the eyes.

"How did he even get you out of Hogwarts--by Portkey?"

She merely nodded.

"His thoughts--that's what they were for." he said sharply.

She nodded again, squeezing her eyes shut with a pained expression, then flushed in anger.

"I told myself to forget about what happened, to not let that git ruin my life, but ever since the Department of Mysteries last year--hearing day after day about his attacks on innocent people, I just can't forget anymore, suddenly, I can't get away from it, and--"

"You can't stop thinking about it, because it's with you wherever you turn." he finished her thought, instinctually knowing what she was going to say, because he felt the same way.

"Well, I had to do something to get past it, something to find a way to come to terms with what happened, so I went there again in hopes of conquering my fears--I just couldn't take feeling so helpless anymore!" As soon as she said this, she looked up at him apologetically. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have got all indignant on you--my problems are rather small compared to yours."

He flinched, as if stung, then just rolled his eyes in amusement at her insensitive comment.

"Thanks for the reminder."

She smiled weakly.

"No problem."

"I understand why you did it, though. If I thought I could get him out of my mind for good by visiting that--graveyard, or even the Department of Mysteries, I'd do it in a second. And you led them to him--exposed him, just like we did last year. Without you, they would've never found out about his existence until he was responsible for killing a lot of people. Where'd he take you, anyway?"

"I think we would all like to know that, Miss Weasley," came the calming but serious voice of her Headmaster from the doorway. Her gaze flickered to him for a moment, before settling on her father, who had entered into the room silently several seconds before, and from the pained expression on his face, had been listening in on their conversation long enough to hear what she had just said about feeling helpless. Her previous anger at him melted as she saw the concern on his face, and she slowly walked over to him, enveloping him in a tight hug and feeling as if she never wanted to let go. She knew she had to, however, and she forced herself from the comfort of his arms and turned to meet her Headmaster's patient gaze.

She frowned in puzzlement at him. They must have been too distracted to notice them entering the room. Unless, of course, for some reason the Headmaster hadn't wanted them to be seen. She narrowed her eyes briefly at Dumbledore in suspicion, meeting his light blue ones that were twinkling with amusement. For a second, the mischievous glint in his eyes reminded her of her brothers when they'd done something that they were confident she wouldn't find out about, and she raised her eyebrows at her Headmaster. It's not like she and Harry had been having a secret meeting, or anything; he needn't have made them invisible to find out her thoughts on what had happened, if that's what he _had _done.

"He took me to a cabin that Tom's mother and father lived in before he found out she was a witch, and before her parents discovered he was a Muggle. It works somewhat like the Room of Requirement, except it lets you see only what you want to see. I suspect that some of the people that rescued me tonight saw Dark Arts supplies, while I saw what he made me see when he took me there in my first year, and…Tom always sees that, too--the same thing, over and over again, and he can barely change it, because what he sees is a reflection of his mind, and since his mind was controlling mine at the time, I saw what he saw by default. His mother's family saw a wizarding manor as grand as their own when they visited their daughter and son-in-law, and his father's family saw a spacious Muggle Mansion."

"A very Slytherin thing to invent. I have never heard of such a spell, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had kept it within the Slytherin line...it must be something like the mirror of Erised, but extended…"

"Tom's mother invented the spell, sir. But he never shared the incantation with me."

"A house of illusions. Ingenious. The human mind is often undone by its own fantasies, finally, even one that appears invulnerable to all that is the outside world. What did _Tom _see, out of curiosity?" There was suddenly a calculating look in her Headmaster's eyes, much different from the good-humored front that he almost always put on around his students. The shrewd glint that momentarily flickered in his usually serene blue eyes before he could cover it up again told Ginny without a doubt that he was not really asking out of simple curiosity, but because the information would be useful in battle, so despite her reluctance to recall her memories of the place at all because of her most recent experience, she made a resolution to describe what he had let her see in as much detail as possible.

"It was always an empty castle, sir--except for the paintings. No comfort…no furniture, even stools, to sit down on, and no place to sleep, as if he didn't need to sleep at all…the portraits were odd…ironically, one of theoddest things about the place. It was obvious to me why some of the things had their place there…the Dark Arts materials, and such…but I guess the paintings meant something to him that only he knew the details of, though I could speculate. They were his favorites, all struck something in him, meant something specific to him that he wouldn't share…almost none were realistic portraits; there were portrayals of battles and supernatural wars between Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, that sort of thing. He loved them, even though he wasn't the least bit religious. I think he found the idea of right and wrong funny on a certain level, and, though he wouldn't admit it, fascinating, because there were times when he'd just stare at them, enthralled, unable to pull his eyes away from the demon blood and white angel wings tarnished by time and faded by sunlight, his eyes shining with this queer light…it makes me shiver, remembering his expression…the look that he fixed them with, as if they contained the secrets of life and cheating death. Even now it unnerves me to remember it. The paintings of people were usually newer, from his time, usually by Picasso or Dali…he took joy in watching one distorted body blend into another and then become nonhuman: sometimes a broken mirror, sometimes a clock hanging in midair as if from an invisible wall. Paintings by Dali lined the ancient walls, every one that he'd seen and been fascinated by--as prints in Muggle publications, I assume. Ironic, really, that a Muggle artist should fascinate him so, but many things about him were. Ironic, I mean. Almost none of the figures in the paintings could speak, and when they could, they always murmured their praises to him, but under their breath, as if they were afraid or reluctant to say their words out loud.

"There were usually…legions of masked Death Eaters standing outside at attention, all looking up at the castle and him in awe. There were so many windows that their eyes could follow you everywhere…and there were just as many mirrors as windows. He mostly just saw himself in the mirrors, loved looking at himself as much as he loved looking at those paintings and his army, if not more, but occasionally his mum and dad would appear beside his reflection, and then he'd try to smash them but couldn't--every time he tried, his near-transparent hands would go right through the mirror, and he'd scream in frustration because it was a constant reminder that he was just a memory--" She stopped, taking a deep breath to steady herself and suppress the anger, disgust and sadness she felt when she remembered this, and, shutting her eyes, searched for the calm she needed to say what she had to saynext.

"Ginny, it's OK, honey, just tell us. We're here with you, now."

"I know dad, I--thanks," she said, pulling herself together. "Anyway, the Death Eaters--it appeared as if there were so many, but there was never anyone really there when I went outside to look." Here, her expression became even more troubled, haunted even. "Most of the Death Eaters were masked, butchosen few weren't…they looked as if they belonged to some of the prominent pureblood families…except--"

And here she broke off, suddenly unable to go on. The memory of it still churned her stomach four years later, and as she felt bile rise in her throat, she clamped her mouth shut, unsure if she could open it safely.

"I understand that the things you saw in there might be very difficult to share, but I assure you, Miss Weasley, and I'm sure Harry can attest to this as well from his previous experiences, that any weight you feel from this memory will lessen if you share it. You never told me of this house in your first year, held it within you all this time. Holding it in, I fear, has only made it worse, has driven you to deal with your experiences alone, cut off from the support of others. While trying to conquer your fears alone is an admirable show of bravery, fear is often most easy to defeat when you're in the company of friends. I therefore must encourage you to push your fear aside, and hide no detail of the experience from us any longer. You have done admirably thus far in your telling. Please continue, as keeping the truth hidden any longer will only cause you more pain."

She turned away, trembling, but as the Headmasters' truthful, butwarm words washed over her, soothing her like the trill of phoenix song, she suddenly didn't feel quite as horrified, nor, upon turning to face the open, concerned faces of the other occupants of the room, quite so alone in remembering what she had experienced with no-one but Tom to keep her company. She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and she looked the Headmaster in the eye and continued.

"They resembled theMalfoys, Blacks, and Notts of my generation, except…they didn't--they didn't have eyes! Yet they still somehow knew where to look, and their eyeless sockets followed him around the castle as if they could see through walls, as if they could see at all, in unadulterated admiration. It was the most horrifying thing…this will help you keep him from harming anyone else, right?" she asked, her voice suddenly fierce. "This will help you lock him up for good?"

"Your information will prove invaluable in dealing with Tom. He always did have a foolish habit of telling his enemies too much about his weaknesses, because he doesn't consider them to be weaknesses. Why did you keep this memory a secret, Miss Weasley, may I ask?"

"I didn't…as you know, Headmaster, I didn't remember much of what happened to me during the time that he possessed me in my first year. I only remembered what he wrote to me in the diary--that's why it took me so long to figure out what was happening to me. None of those memories ever came back, thank Merlin, except for the memories I had of the times he took me to that…_place_, and even those memories didn't start coming back until the summer after first year, in the form of nightmares. Even after they did, I wasn't sure if they were real. They seemed so surreal, so dreamlike, that I thought they were a product of my imagination, of my fear, or some strange fantasy he had left in me, a residue of his thoughts that was still clinging to my mind like a parasite even after he was gone. But then I remembered the ritual, and I realized…I realized it was real and that he had let me remember on purpose, and it made me feel like it had happened all over again! After a while, I got over it; I knew I couldn't let it affect me, prevent me from having fun, making friends, but after the Department of Mysteries last year, after Voldemort started attacking people's homes, ruining more lives, I suddenly couldn't stop thinking about it again…it was a constant reminder, and I didn't like how weakened I felt by this fear, so I decided I needed to visit the place again, to convince myself that it wasn't worth being scared of. I didn't like feeling like I suddenly couldn't rely on my friends, just because the attacks reminded me of how he had used me, and I wanted them to be able to rely on me, not someone living in the past, so I…so I went.."

Just then Molly Weasley walked in with Madam Pomfrey, each carrying vials of calming draught and a viscous orange fluid that had little golden crystals floating around in it.

"Ah, Poppy, Molly, I see you've brought the serum. Excellent."

Madam Pomfrey nodded curtly and started to make her way over to her patient, but was beaten there and all but pushed out of the way by a very angry Mrs. Weasley.

"Ginevra Molly Weasley! Have you learned nothing from your first year! I expected better from you, young lady, running off into the woods without so much as telling anyone where you went off too! There is a reason the Forbidden Forest is forbidden, and doing a Dark Magic ritual besides! You could have died, you could have been expelled! Have we taught you nothing of morals, of why Dark Magic is wrong! We shouldn't have to tell that, you know from first hand experience how it can hurt people--"

"Molly, your daughter has gone through a trying ordeal tonight. Though I am sure you are very concerned, may I suggest that you let her give you her explanations later, as the Aurors are going to be here any minute?" Dumbledore said, smoothly interceding out of necessity. He needed to take care of the mountain of legal issues that came with the presence of the teenage version of Lord Voldemort at Hogwarts, and had a limited amount of time to do it in, as much as he would rather spend that time with the Weasley family and Harry. He had also intervened because he had observed that Ginny was beginning to swell with rage, mirroring her mother in an uncanny way that spelled trouble. Though the small child in him would have found seeing them screaming at each other extremely amusing, the diplomat in him unfortunately had other ideas, and balked at standing by and passively watching as they tore each other to pieces. "I believe that Miss Weasley will need all the moral support she can get from her family and friends when they question her," he finished.

That last sentence had the exact effect he had intended, and the room fell to a dead silence for a moment before--

"Aurors are going to question my Ginny?"

"I didn't do anything!"

"She didn't!"

That last one was Harry, and while Albus was rather surprised how indignant he was on Ginny's behalf when he should have known that he wouldn't have asked one of his students to take a truth potion if it hadn't been absolutely necessary, at least everyone was focused on the issue at hand again. Mrs. Weasley was glaring at him, and Albus felt his irritation grow, but he fought to keep it in check by reminding himself that her anger at him merely reflected the depth of her love for her daughter.

"I do believe Ginny in everything she says, Molly. I know she is telling the truth. But legally, my subjective belief is not going to stand for much, and Aurors are generally less trusting than most. I believe you, Miss Weasley, but unfortunately, you need to convince those who won't. You will need to takethis truth potion--"

"What, you can't--you mean this isn't for Riddle, this is for my Ginny--"

"Tom will be given Veritaserum, Molly, but unfortunately, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement wants to question Ginny under the influence of a potion, too, though mostly as a witness, in order to prosecute Tom for his various crimes. Miss Weasley, the potion you will be taking is Sentireserum, which is not quite as potent as Veritaserum, because it can be fought against by those with an especially strong will. I do not suggest that you fight against it, Miss Weasley, though the sensation of having your will taken away from you is disorientating. The Aurors would find it suspicious, no matter how good your reason for fighting it."

Ginny grimaced, but nodded in resignation.

"I won't fight it. I guess they need all the information they can get to deal with Tom."

Dumbledore smiled in gratitude at her mature attitude towards the situation and nodded, then turned to face all the occupants in the room.

"I am afraid that I must be present for Tom's questioning. However," he said, turning again to Ginny, "I will be back to check how everything went later. Don't worry, Miss Weasley, your family, and I believe Harry, will be gratified to stay with you as moral support."

With that, he departed, and a tense silence settled on the room, as the remaining occupants waited nervously for the Aurors to arrive.

Next Chapter, Three Degrees of Deception: Tom shows his expertise at manipulating what should be absolute, while not quite to the level of manipulating nature, itself. (It's a weird title for a chapter, I know, but I do have my reasons behind it.)

"_Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."_ Machiavelli, The Prince 


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